A Mother's Love
by Alice Ladeux
Summary: A short look into the life of Mrs. Zabini and how she got to the point of murdering her husband(s). 'No one, she thought to herself, could have predicted how her future would be like.'


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Thank you for checking out this story. Just a little oneshot about Blaise Zabini's mother and how I imagine her life would have been like. If you have any suggestions, comments or criticism you can leave a review or PM me. I hope you enjoy this story, I had a lot of fun writing this.

* * *

 **A Mother's Love**

No one, she thought to herself, could have predicted how her future would be like. Maria Zabini hummed quietly to herself while Husband Number 7 devoured the meal presented to him not 10 seconds prior.  
Briefly she pictured him next to a barnyard animal, pumped up to the top with food, ready for the slaughter and mused that there was in fact, very little difference to be seen. Broken out of her thoughts by the sound of snapping fingers which obviously came from her lovely husband, who seemed to have mistaken her for the waitress.  
He meaningfully grunted at the salt. She would never stop being amazed by how Number 7 could communicate entirely through grunts and the occasional huff or moan.  
She obligingly handed him the delicate jar and sighed inwardly on how the wonderful plate of food, which also happened to be ridiculously expensive was utterly wasted on this man, who she was pretty sure couldn't tell the difference between chocolate pudding and diarrhea.  
But as she predicted he had insisted on going to the most expensive restaurant wizarding Paris had to offer. 'Only the best to celebrate my honeymoon.', he had argued, seemingly forgetting that it was in fact her honeymoon too.  
It had suited her just fine. She never really liked the honeymoons anyway.

* * *

The first time she married, her mother was ecstatic. It was a good match, everyone agreed on that.  
He was a little older than expected but he was from a good, pureblood line and quite pleasant to look at. Not to mention his considerable fortune and countless estates dotting the English coastline.  
No one had asked her if she thought he would make a good husband, but she had not expected anything else. She had, however, hoped to marry someone from her home country Italy. Perhaps someone she already knew from her schooling years. Instead she had would be wed to this stranger from a cold country that she knew nothing about.  
Her family was proud of her, telling her that her beauty had won over a far better suitor than anything her country could offer. Silently, in the confines of her room, she disagreed. But she knew better than to protest, she knew better than to resist, knowing what had happened to her cousin who ran away a few years prior. Her family was not the forgiving sort.

The first time she met her husband was at the altar. She was nervous but tried to be brave in front of this man who would be her future.  
First impressions counted and so she put her chin up, comforted by the knowledge that she looked absolutely stunning in the gown her mother had selected. Looking expectantly into the eyes of the man who would change her and her future so severely, she only saw a cold, calculating man, devoid of any love or admiration.  
She had always prided herself with her ability to read people and this man was unsettling. But she suppressed her instincts to back away and went through with it anyway.

In the years to come Maria Zabini would only allow herself to look back at this moment a handful of times, carefully selected moments where she was truly with only herself as company, and let the misery wash over her like the never ending ocean. Because in all her life, her instincts hadn't failed her once.

After the ceremony he barely spoke to her. In fact, she felt ignored the whole evening until it was time for the wedding night. Despite the numerous rumors about her fueled by the jealousy of her classmates she was still a virgin. At that age she found the notion of waiting until marriage very romantic.

Now sitting inside the best Restaurant of Paris with a clear view of the Eiffel tower, she smiled bitterly as she took a large gulp of the red wine the maître had offered her. Funny how people can change given enough time.  
Her first husband had indeed wanted to conclude the wedding by 'making love' to her. But she her notion of sex then and his had obviously been on the opposite ends of the spectrum.  
She had cried herself to sleep that night, her ripped gown beside her and her newly appointed husband gone to drink some more. Blood sullied the linen but she didn't bother moving. This evening would set the pace for every other evening that came after for a long time.

He never failed to show up every day at 10 pm and break her apart a little bit more.  
She was completely alone in a country where she struggled to understand the people, the language, the customs and apparently everything else, too, as her husband never failed to remind her.  
It was probably very unhealthy to have only one source of human contact who seemed to despise her very existence and made that abundantly clear through verbal and physical means, but she had very little choice on the matter. She was isolated from the outside world.

Sometimes she would hear her husband coming home late at night, even wounded at times and she suspected it had everything to do with the war currently going on. She didn't ask, partly because she thought she already knew the answer, partly because she truly wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

The moment everything changed for her was the moment she received the results of her doctor's appointment.  
She was pregnant.  
After a very young looking nurse came and congratulated her she continued to sit unmoving in the uncomfortable plastic chair that she was offered in the cramped office of her personal doctor which was located in the depths of St. Mungos and cried silently. '  
It was the first time since she was married to _him_ that she felt real joy and she wanted to relish every moment of it, fearful that it would be ripped away from her, that _he_ would take her child away. The more she thought about it the more she felt herself grow into someone much stronger than the person she had been for the last months, because she had to be.  
She would not let any harm befall her child even if she had to go to the end of the world to ensure his safety, the nurse had said she would have a little boy. He would be protected; she would make sure of it. Absolutely sure. Then and there she knew, she would stop at nothing to protect him.  
It was her destiny, she was sure of it.

And so she walked out of St. Mungos a place of healing and protection, completely calm and collected, because Maria of the house Zabini would not stop at anything to protect her son. Not even murder.

* * *

Maria Zabini picked at her meal in front of her gazing out of the window and wishing herself far, far away from this place, preferably somewhere with her son Blaise.  
But the school just started and she had to leave her only love in the confines of the dark and cold castle named Hogwarts.  
Narcissa had always called her melodramatic but personally she thought she had a more realistic view of the supposedly best wizarding school in Europe than Narcissa would ever achieve. The former student of Hogwarts was too blinded by her nostalgia to really see the place it had become since Harry Potter started attending. It was a wonder to her Hogwarts had any students left to be honest.  
She tended not to say too much about it in the company of her vast circle of acquaintances and always steered the topic onto the teachers or -a party favorite- how senile Dumbledore seemed to have become.  
This was because she herself couldn't say anything too scathing without facing the one question that would unfailingly always come up as a retort: 'Then why is Blaise still at Hogwarts? Why not send him to Durmstrang or any other place?'.  
Those fools actually thought she hadn't considered that. Maria always considered everything when it came to her son, because ultimately everything she did was for the sole purpose of protecting Blaise. So she considered and in the end decided it would be more beneficial for him to make connections to other wealthy family heirs. His future would be secured through the ties to various influential families in England and some others connected to him through her own influence.  
Husband Number 6 had actually dared to argue with her about the welfare of Blaise. She had always hated when they tried to get to her through her son and tried to keep Blaise far away from the potential suitors, but that one had been especially obnoxious. That was why she was forced to get rid of him far earlier than what had been planned.  
It may have been a sign of her faltering humanity that she wasn't very bothered by that. Thinking back on it, it hadn't been the most unpleasant death she ever decided on either.

* * *

It had been the first time in her married life that she was absolutely delighted that her husband completely ignored her during the day, or else he might have noticed her strange demeanor after her stay at St. Mungos.  
If the man she married would have been just the tiniest bit more attentive, he would have been very surprised to find that the wife he married seemed to have completely disappeared, he would have wondered about her strange behavior the next weeks and he may have noticed that her personality seemed to have undergone a drastic change.  
But it just so happened that her husband was a very self-absorbed creature and did not even register his wife floating into the house in a completely serene manner. She proceeded to smile at him through dinner, even with him belittling her every other minute and then casually mentioned her pregnancy to him.  
He seemed pleased with her that evening and she was pleased too, but for a completely different reason.

If the man she had married would have been just the tiniest bit more attentive, he may have survived the first year of his marriage, but then again, if that had been the case there probably wouldn't have been a reason to get rid of him in the first place.  
And so, completely undisturbed from her husband, she slowly wormed her way into Englands very own high society. Bit by bit with the patience of a spider sure of its victory, she started to spin her web wider and thicker each time, for the sole purpose of trapping the poor unfortunate soul, who thought he could threaten her son by existing in their general vicinity.

And so Tobias Antonius Warsey, who had been married to Maria Warsey died a horrible and tragic death at the age of 44.  
People speculated that he got caught up in a fight between Death Eaters and some anonymous resistance fighters, or, some would whisper, he was a Death Eater himself and thus brought his own demise.  
The official statement released by the Aurors seemed to confirm this belief. When they arrived at the scene it was littered with scorch marks from powerful curses and one of those seemed to have hit him square in the chest which caused him to die of a multitude of deep cuts hours later before someone stumbled upon his corpse.  
At that time, no one bothered to check why there were no witnesses in such a populated area, or why there seemed to be no one from either side that could attest to this.

And so, after the funeral was long over, a very pregnant Maria Zabini, who had insisted on changing her name back because the grief was just too much to handle for a delicate person like her, stood before the grave of the man who thought her insignificant and smiled.

* * *

Fourteen years later the very same Maria sat before the husband who she made out to be her last.  
After that she was very certain no one would think to pressure her about marrying again. Her own parents were long gone and no one else would truly bother.  
Her beautiful son would inherit a combined value of seven fortunes plus her own. It was a running gag between her and Narcissa that no one would rival her fortune if she ever stopped to count how much money she had between changing husbands, but in actuality, she knew exactly what she owned.  
She had never stopped calculating anything in 14 years. Over a decade of planning had gone into this and now Blaise, her sweet wonderful Blaise, would be completely untouchable after his 17th birthday.  
Because by then, he would be on par with Draco Malfoy in everything from power, money to how many rooms they had in their estates.  
She never wanted to dethrone the Malfoys, that would do more harm then good, she would let them be number one if it pleased them.  
Blaise didn't have to be number one, Blaise only had to be safe.  
Because she loved Blaise more than anything in this world and she had stopped at nothing to ensure he knew. And so she watched as her last husband started to choke on his meal she smiled serenely, because fourteen years of hard work would come to an end tonight.

* * *

So that's it. Thank you very much for taking your time to read this. I hope my writing style wasn't too awkward. English isn't my native language so if you see any mistakes let me know.

Leave a review if you want. I would love to hear what you think (love it hate it?) and I could always use some constructive criticism.

Have a great day! :)

-Alice


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